The Swellers Release New Music Collection: ‘B-Sides and Rarities’

To be completely honest and realistic, being in a band always involves a debt of some sort. Sometimes you owe a few hundred bucks, and in some unfortunate cases you owe a million. As record sales fluctuate over time, artists are constantly looking for new ways to fund their projects and passion. Either they’ll play a live streamed show on StageIT, start a campaign on IndieGoGo or Kickstarter, or just do something completely out of the box to get some support. Being in one of the bands who owes some money, we figured we’d do something simple and effective for a win/win situation.

The Swellers have been around for twelve years or so and we’ve always had the best people supporting us. Whether you came to a show, put on the show, put out a record or let us sleep on your floor, we’ve always done our best to give back. In this case, we needed to pay off some big bills and had something in return. We compiled a collection we’re simply calling, B-sides and Rarities. It’s 17 songs and we’re only asking for a minimum donation of $5. We’re not begging or making false promises to raise money than breaking up. We have everything from some of our earliest demos mixed in with alternate takes of songs, unreleased studio quality songs (that almost made it onto our albums) and even an embarrassing bedroom demo I did of a song. We put it all out there and showing you the many stages of the writing process.

The collection has been up for only a week or so, but because of amazing people like you, we’ve already paid off one of our major bills. Whether you chip in $5 or $500, it’s helping us more than you’ll know. We’re not broke and we’re not using you, we’ve just worked out a way to use what we do best and help support ourselves. Most of the time people will make a huge production out of a release like this with a press campaign, a vinyl pressing and many other large expenses when in reality it’s just a waste of money. 100% of the money is going to helping our band flourish. A few months ago we emptied our account to pay for UK plane tickets and in one week we’re flying overseas! Last fall we made the trek to Brazil and had an amazing time, then the promoter completely disappeared and we were never compensated the amount we were owed. The financial blunders are not stopping us. Last year, which was the least amount of touring we’ve done in the last 8 years, we still spent over $13,000 on gas. We’re a self-managed and and we do things the old school way. I believe there should be a large amount of transparency with the fans.

Yes, there are still bills to pay. There will always be highways to drive down, planes to catch and countries to explore. All we ask is that you tell your friends, keep listening if you like what you hear and if you have a few bucks feel free to head to our bandcamp and pick up some music! We’re on an amazing label called No Sleep Records who fully supports this release we’ve done and we’re gracious beyond belief that you guys for giving us a chance in such an over-saturated musical laundscape.